Flywheel: Arming LA’s Taxicab Drivers In The Ridesharing Fight

Date:08/20/2013

Company:Flywheel Software

Source:SoCal Tech

here’s been a war brewing in Los Angeles, between a trio of ride services–Lyft, Uber, Sidecar– and the city’s taxi drivers–over a new generation of Internet-enabled and smartphone-friendly, connected rideshare services, versus what has been an old, opaque, and phone-driven taxi establishment. There’s been plenty of debate over how to handle the new services, and arguments for and against both ridesharing services and the taxis.

One of the new developments in that battle, has been the entry of a Silicon Valley startup,Flywheel, into the war. Flywheel offers up software and hardware which enables those same, Internet- and smartphone-friendly features–not for ridesharing services–but for the traditional taxicab services. We spoke with Flywheel’s CEO, Steve Humphreys, who has been in Los Angles this week.